ALBANY, NEW YORK--The
New York Board of Regents considered recommendations Monday designed to limit
the use of corporal punishments and "aversive therapies" in schools.

The proposal by deputy education commissioner Rebecca Cort and other
state education officials would ban the use of certain punishments -- such as
electric shocks and withholding of food to change student behavior -- except in
plans that are reviewed and approved by an appointed panel.

The new rules would apply to students within the state and those sent to
other states, most specifically Massachusetts, where pain and aversion are
allowed at the privately run Judge Rotenberg Education Center. About 150
students at JRC come from New York school districts. Half of them wear
electrodes on their skin 24-hours a day so that JRC staff can deliver 2-second
shocks to them to alter their behavior.

Most of the children reportedly have mental disabilities that affect
their behavior.

While some parents defend the use of the electric shocks to keep their
children from hurting themselves or others, critics point out that the jolts
are also applied for simply not following orders, and for such behaviors as
whispering and "failure to maintain a neat appearance".

Cort told the Board of Regents that JRC staff commonly restrain children
with splints, helmets, or tubes, and force them to eat ''bland food consisting
of mashed potatoes, chicken, and spinach garnished with liver powder" as
punishment.

The Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care is
investigating reports by a former JRC worker claiming that the strict diet
forced on a 12-year-old girl with autism amounted to neglect.

The proposal came three weeks after New York mother Evelyn Nicholson
filed a $10 million lawsuit against the state, claiming education officials
were negligent by failing to ensure that her son, Antwone, was not mistreated
when he went to JRC.

The Board did not vote on the proposal Monday, nor did it take public
comment from the parents and others who had gathered at the meeting. A vote is
expected next month.

"We don't do this to prisoners in the criminal justice system, so we
shouldn't be doing it to people with disabilities," Leo Sarkissian, executive
director of the ARC of Massachusetts, told the Boston Globe.